The Project Gotham line of games has always looked impressive, as well on paper as on screen. I don't have an Xbox, and have always hoped that Bizarre Creations would release a PC version; it looks like this isn't going to happen any time soon... pity. It just might convince me to get an Xbox360.

The Need for Speed series has lost its appeal as far as I'm concerned. The greatest title was Porsche Unleashed / Porsche 2000 (NFS5). It was a fairly realistic sim, the first in the series where you could really FEEL the difference in car design, suspension, and performance as you evolved through the 40+ years of Porsche history. The "Underground" games are too much focused on visuals and "pimping", and lack the refreshing driving experience of previous incarnations. Also, another huge disappointment in NFSU are the tracks - or should I say track. It grows tired in about 10 minutes. Each track is no more than a slight variation of the previous one. Gone are the varied landscapes as we've come to expect from NFS. I wish EA would refocus this product line, and remember that the game should be about DRIVING, not simply about having the most pimped-out ride...

I can't take the credit for the angle on this story - I just followed the lead of Ben @ Bizarre. But it made me smile, so I thought you guys might enjoy it too.

I'm a huge PGR fan. I too wasn't really a console fan XUntitled, but I have now shifted from PC only to a horses-for-course person: PC for FPS; Xbox for driving games.

I haven't played Underground BlueDemon but I know Tim uses it a lot for his graphics card benchmarking, so I'm sure he'll post a comment. The graphics on Xbox 360 for Most Wanted look amazing. I'm still likely to favour PGR3, since it should have the gameplay I fell in love with years ago with MSR on Dreamcast (same developer).

The comments from X05 have me a little worried, but since I won't be getting a 360 until after Christmas, I'll get plenty of warning of what the retail code is like.

This is a little ironic for me, considering I spent about £400 buying my first Xbox *almost* sight unseen. I was lucky enough to have the chance to play PGR1 in the NVIDIA meeting rooms at Comdex 2001. I was already a big fan of MSR, so the decision of whether to queue up that night at Midnight to buy an Xbox on day of release was down how PGR played.

As it turned out, I loved it, and thanks to my MSR experience, was pretty good even at the first attempt. Indeed, the NVIDIA staff milling about asked if I was one of the developers - none of them were any good at the game, whereas I just waltzed in and pwned from the green light

I know from 2 years of PGR2 on XBOX Live that there are many better players than I am, but I always like telling that story just the same :P

As you might imagine, I'm pretty excited about Gotham TV and the idea of tournament races being broadcast to an audience. Maybe I'll start a bit-tech league...

So...that's avg 95k polygons per car (including the assumed 10k for damage), say 6 cars per race. That's over half a million polys just for the cars.
Add on polys for the scenery and spectators (who are allegedly interactive), and that is a truly amazing number of polygons to be throwing around...

Yes indeed, which might suggest why they could be struggling a little for frame rate, capping it at 30. Then again, they *did* say they would try and hit 60, and seemed fairly confident they could given the time... it now just depends on whether they can get it done before they have to sign it off and go to master in order to hit retail before Xmas.

Incidentally, while I don't have any specific techie details on it, I would well imagine there is lots of clever z-buffer culling going on here. Basically, if one car is in front of another, blocking the view, the GPU just doesn't bother to render the "invisible" polygons, which saves a lot of bandwidth.

It's been around at the consumer PC graphics level for a decade now, back when it was 3dfx vs PowerVR - the latter using Tile-Based Rendering (TBR) which was very clever, but ultimately failed in the face of NVIDIA vs 3dfx / NVIDIA vs ATI.

If you think about 6 cars on a starting grid, not 100% of all six cars will be visible at any one time. Indeed, take just one car, driving in front of us: arguably all the polys that make up the front of the car won't be drawn because they are obscured by the back half of the car...

Like I said, I don't have any information as to what exactly Bizarre are doing, what the ATI GPU is capable of etc but this is just one trick developers can use to have the appearance of a high-poly scene.

So...that's avg 95k polygons per car (including the assumed 10k for damage), say 6 cars per race. That's over half a million polys just for the cars.
Add on polys for the scenery and spectators (who are allegedly interactive), and that is a truly amazing number of polygons to be throwing around...

In the article he said it was NOT including the 10,000 per car of damage. To that means 105k if you include the damage... per car.

I'm almost positive as pope said they are using some techniques to make the rendering more economic. Thats what CG is all about.. creating the most life-like image in the most economic way.

I love the poly car, just put that in as my desktop background! 105,000polygons is crazy, I'm not an xbox fan, but I have loved playing PG2 on my friend's xbox, and I think I'll be liking pg3 if I ever play it.

Kipman725:I'm sure there will be an option, just as there is for every other console. You may have to wait for a 3rd party VGA adapter, but it will happen.

Microsoft announced a while back (when they first announced periphiels for the system) a 360toVGA cable as one of the video cable options they would be making and having avaibalable at launch I beleive.

Well, if the 360 can throw around that many polygons, that's made my mind up (seeing as the PS3 is gonna be expensive as hell, and my housemate will probably be buying a Revolution (he's a bit of a Ninty fanboy)).

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Bally Jerry pranged his kite right in the how's your father. Hairy blighter, dicky-birdied, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper's and caught his can in the Bertie!

It's still early days, radiator. Xbox 360 will be available this Christmas (in fact, just 5 weeks away now for US readers) and we know the pricing. If anything, PS3 could be faster, but all we really know is that it's due 'sometime' in 2006, and will be *intentionally* expensive.

One doesn't buy a console based on polygon throughput alone - it's what it can do with those polygons, so as always, it comes down to the games. I'm a PGR fan, so Xbox 360 for me. MGS / GT nutters will wait it out for PS3, and then the Console Wars will start all over again.

The number of polygons in relation to frame rates is very controlled the way I think about it. The only time you really get all cars on screen at once is at the start, at which you aren't going really fast, but once the race gets going cars seperate and usaually a few lag behind, or can't be seen because they have already made a turn, or haven't made that turn. 60 fps should be acheived rather easily for the most part of the races (hopefully). Though 35 fps looks pretty smooth to me at least.....

My last console was the PS2. I bought it and gradually stopped playing. After a about 9 months not playing it I sold it. I would never buy a console based on polygon count of "my processor is better then your processor" kind of talk. I'll give it a try though. If the games are good (and not just good looking) I'll probably buy one.